


Blind Panic

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blindness, Dubious Herpetology, Fluff, M/M, Other, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), shedding skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 13:56:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: The first sign that something was wrong with Crowley should probably have been the way he stumbled over a chair as he went to leave the back room of the bookshop. Unfortunately, since Crowley often moved like a snake who’d had limbs foisted on him against his will, Aziraphale thought nothing of it.





	Blind Panic

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: I'm not a herpetologist, I know very little about snakes, and I'm relying on Google. So please don't use this is a caring-for-your-snake reference (why would you, really).
> 
> I'll be honest - I've been sitting on this for a while because I wasn't sure I was happy with it, but I think this is as good as it's gonna get so you might as well have it. Enjoy!

The first sign that something was wrong with Crowley should probably have been the way he stumbled over a chair as he went to leave the back room of the bookshop. Unfortunately, since Crowley often moved like a snake who’d had limbs foisted on him against his will, Aziraphale thought nothing of it.

The second sign, immediately afterwards, was that Crowley had fallen over said chair in an attempt to get to the landline Aziraphale kept in service. His hands fumbled over the buttons as he carefully felt each number before dialling it, as if he was afraid that there might be jam or broken glass in the way of his fingers. But Crowley was a creature of strange habits, so Aziraphale let it pass.

The third sign, which directly followed the second, was that when Crowley had finished dialling and waited the obligatory several seconds for the call to be answered, he had asked to book a cab. That was when Aziraphale panicked.

Crowley _ never _ went anywhere by cab - why would he, when he had the Bentley? Buses were all well and good for covert meetings, and Aziraphale had once seen him wobble down the street on a velocipede just because Aziraphale had suggested that he couldn’t, but a _ taxi _ offered no such benefits, and who would Crowley be meeting but him, and he’d certainly never suggested that Crowley couldn’t take a taxi if he wanted.

“Sorry, angel,” Crowley told him with a grimace as he replaced the receiver, “I’ve really got to go.”

“But- we were just- I thought we were going to dinner?”

“And you should, really, I’m so sorry, I’ve got to-”

“Crowley-” He wasn’t sure how to articulate the sudden swell of panic blooming in his chest. “It’s not too much, is it?”

“Angel- oh, _ angel_, no-” The demon reached out as if to cup his cheek in his hand, but he wound up holding his hand a little over Aziraphale’s shoulder instead. He seemed to realise, and brought the hand down in an awkward patting motion. “This- us- it’s good. It’s really good, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to-”

“But why do you have to- is it Hell?” Crowley hadn’t seemed to receive any news, any message - he’d just been sitting, watching Aziraphale read, with a soft smile on his face. Then, suddenly, he’d stood, and bolted, and fallen over a chair. “Are they coming for us?”

“No. No, angel, I just- oh, _ Somebody_, I didn’t want you to see me like this, I thought I had more time-”

“Crowley, you’re scaring me.” Aziraphale reached out to touch Crowley’s cheek and the demon flinched, surprised. As if he hadn’t seen it coming, as if- “Crowley. Crowley, can you _see?”_

“I’m fine!” Crowley yelped, and stumbled off towards the shop door. “That’ll be my cab-”

“That is a transit van,” Aziraphale told him firmly, “I’m coming home with you.”

“No, really-” But Aziraphale had not spent 6000 years around his demon without learning how to tell when he lied - very rarely, to Aziraphale, but often to those around them - and so he stepped into Crowley’s path and let him walk right into him.

“Take your glasses off, Crowley.”

Crowley sighed, shuffled his feet like a schoolboy being told to empty his pockets, and finally reached up to pluck the ever-present lenses from his own face. Aziraphale stared in shock; Crowley’s beautiful yellow eyes were grey-blue now, and milky.

“Yeah. ‘M blind. Don’t worry, I just need to get home. I know where stuff is, there.”

“Then please, Crowley. Let me share your cab. If only so we can talk.”

“Not about this?” Crowley gestured vaguely at his eyes, then put his glasses back on.

“Well… not in the cab, at least. Not at all, if you don’t want to. But… it is a bit alarming-” A car horn sounded outside. “That _ is _the taxi.”

“Come on, then, angel.” Crowley offered his arm, looking a little sheepish, and Aziraphale took full advantage of the gesture to guide him safely into the waiting car.

The ride to Crowley’s flat was largely silent; Aziraphale exchanged brief pleasantries with the driver about the weather before tuning out and letting Crowley carry the conversation if he wanted to. The demon seemed remarkably unperturbed, now, by his lack of vision; it was as if, now that Aziraphale had seen, he’d gone through the worst of it. As if abruptly going blind halfway through a wonderful afternoon was _ embarrassing_, rather than terrifying. Had this been coming on for longer than Aziraphale had realised? He’d seemed a little off earlier, gazing into the middle distance on occasion rather than focusing on whatever he’d usually be looking at, but- well, yesterday he’d been fine, he’s sure of it. They’d played Monopoly, because the modern version was one of Crowley’s and he was proud of it, and Crowley had had no trouble reading the little cards then. Unless he’d somehow _ memorised _ them - had Crowley been going blind for _ years _, and Aziraphale had never realised?

No; that was stupid; there would have been signs. Yesterday, Crowley hadn't been blind; Aziraphale was sure of it. But today, it seemed, he couldn't see a thing.

"Well, here we are,” Crowley said brightly as Aziraphale unlocked his front door for him. “I’ll be all right from here, really.” He was already striding confidently through the flat as he spoke - minimalist as it was, there was very little to crash into, and he ducked easily around what little furniture did get in his way. “You can go, if you like.”

“I’d really like to know why you’re blind,” Aziraphale told him, “I don’t think suddenly just going blind is a good thing, even for us.”

“Usssss?” Crowely hissed. “We’re not the same. I’m occult, you’re ethereal. Demon. Angel.”

“Same original stock,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“Oh, yes, exactly the same, except I’m a bit of a bloody great snake.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing, angel.” Crowley was being very snappy with him, all of a sudden, and Aziraphale couldn’t say he liked it. “I’m going to bed, do what you like.” And he disappeared into the bedroom.

Aziraphale gave him about ten minutes to cool off, then stuck his head around the door. He had a vague idea that he might just let Crowley know he was leaving, or else offer to keep him company while he slept - whichever Crowley wanted, now that they were in this new sort of relationship. Now that they’d been kissing, and holding hands, and exchanging dirty jokes that weren’t really jokes, never quite sure if the moment was right to take things further. It had been weeks, now, and they were comfortable, so maybe Crowley wouldn’t mind if Aziraphale just sat with him while he slept-

All of that fled Aziraphale’s mind the moment he actually peeked into Crowley’s bedroom, because suddenly it seemed that being _ a bit of a bloody great snake _ mattered rather a lot. Crowley’s bedroom was dimly lit by what seemed to be several large heat lamps, secured in the corners of the room, and the bed seemed occupied only by a huge pile of duvets all balled up at the centre of the mattress. Crowley was nowhere to be seen - but then the pile of duvets shifted slightly, and Aziraphale realised he was in there somewhere.

“Crowley?” The duvets stopped shifting for a moment, and a familiar voice issued from within.

“Angel?”

“I’ve read some books, you know, on herpetology.”

“Good for you,” Crowley rejoined. “So?”

“So… you’re hiding. You’re defensive, and you’ve gone _ blind_.”

“Excellent observations. Go home, angel.”

“Are you… _ shedding?” _

Crowley sighed, the sound coming out as a long hiss. Then he poked his head out of a gap in the duvets, just enough for Aziraphale to notice his milky eyes again, the terrible state of his snake form’s scales, dull and flaky.

“Yeah. Yeah, and it’s just going to disgust you, so go home.”

“I’m not disgusted. This- this is normal? For shedding?”

“Completely normal, very annoying, not the sort of thing an angel wants to see-”

“All right.” Aziraphale sighed. “I take the hint, you don’t want me in here. But honestly, Crowley, you could have said. You had me so _ worried_.”

He went back into the living room and snapped his fingers, summoning up the book on snakes he’d bought when he’d realised Crowley was going to be around more often. He’d read it, of course, read enough about the way snakes shed their skin to be able to put two and two together eventually, but he was a little vague on the details of the process, and it would do no harm to read up on it while Crowley slept. He didn’t, however, want to _ actually leave_. Crowley had a tendency to push him away just when he needed him most, and this was the best compromise he could think of between invading Crowley’s space and abandoning him completely.

It was best not to touch a snake while he was shedding, Aziraphale learned, and his eyesight would return fairly soon, even before he’d fully shed his skin. As for helping to ease the process, the best approach was apparently to put a tray of warm water in the enclosure so the snake could soak in it as he pleased.

This established, Aziraphale pottered into the bathroom and found himself face-to-face with a bathtub not unlike the one he’d been ‘executed’ in, back in Hell. It was a _ nice _tub, certainly, with plenty of room to wriggle around in, Aziraphale imagined, but it still gave him the creeps. He turned the taps, adjusting the balance of hot and cold until he was satisfied, then sat to wait for the bath to fill and tried to think his most unblessy thoughts. No part of this water would be holy.

The sound of water seemed to have roused Crowley, who now slithered right up to the doorframe and peered curiously around it with unseeing eyes, flicking his tongue out to taste the situation instead.

“Who’ssss th- angel. I thought you’d left.”

“No, you didn’t,” Aziraphale pointed out. “You’d have sensed my presence, still.”

“Not in ssssnake form. Not _ shedding_. I thought you’d gone,” Crowley told him, and then, quieter, “I’m glad you haven’t.”

“Mm?” Aziraphale couldn’t help but be pleased at that. “I, er, thought you might like- the book said- it might make it easier for you.”

“It might,” Crowley agreed, “if I could get in there. Hard to get any grip on the sidessss, see. To say nothing of getting out again.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. And he wasn’t supposed to _ touch _him, so- “if you don’t mind getting a towel wet, I could lift you in. And - and you know I wouldn’t let you drown.”

“What’s a towel got to do with it?”

“The book said don’t _ touch_-”

“Oh, I’m not that far gone yet. Probably. Everything’s happening so fast, this time, I usually get more warning. Go on, then, if it would make you feel better. Dump me in there.”

“Only if you-”

“Angel. Get a towel, dump me in. Sounds nisssse.”

It took him a few moments to find where Crowley _ kept _towels, but he was glad to discover that they were of the highest quality, soft and thick. He spread one out on the tiled floor directly in front of the snake, and Crowley obediently draped himself across it. Then his serpentine body tensed.

“Er. ‘M heavy.”

“And I am a Principality,” Aziraphale pointed out, wrapping him carefully in the towel and hoisting him before he could argue.

Crowley had, perhaps, expected to be fed into the bath slowly, head-first, as if Aziraphale were threading a needle; he had not, it appeared, expected the angel to use the part of him covered by the towel only as a handhold so that he could heft the entire snake into the air and carefully dip his tail into the water.

“Temperature all right?”

“Yesssssss…” And coil by coil, Aziraphale lowered him in, carefully draping the last foot of his body’s length up the side of the bath so he could rest his head.

Neither of them considered the possibility of the water cooling, so it didn’t. For a long while, the only sound was an occasional splash as Crowley wriggled, and then the snake spoke.

“I’m ssssorry about before.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“No, I was rude. But I’m not used to having company for thissssss.” Crowley dipped his head under the water for a moment, then launched himself back at the side. “‘M usually alone.”

“Today, you didn’t need to be.”

“Bath helpssssss.” Crowley turned his head and looked right at Aziraphale for a moment. “I can sssssee a bit, now.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Meansss it’s closssse. I don’t mind, if you don’t want to look.”

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“'Sssssssss no skin off my nose, angel.” He seemed to realise what he’d said just a moment too late, and Aziraphale couldn’t resist laughing at him.

“I think it will be, my dear, one way or another. Isn’t that rather the point?”

“Sssstay or don’t, angel.”

Aziraphale took a moment to look at him; Crowley was harder to read in snake form, but he seemed… agitated. Aziraphale couldn’t tell if he was squirming because he needed to shed, _ now_, or because he was embarrassed. Either way, he was probably better off not making him feel any _ more _self-conscious. He tried to think of whether the book had said anything useful…

“Oh! Won’t you need something to, you know, er, rub against?” Well, he might not have made _ Crowley _ any more self-conscious, but _ he _ was certainly blushing like a fool, now. “Not-! I meant, er, a log-” Well, _ that _wasn’t helping. “Or a rock, or something.”

“If you want to miracle me up a rock, that’ssss fine.” Crowley wasn’t looking at him, but he must have been keeping an eye on the situation, because he didn’t seem startled in the slightest when a smooth rock appeared beside his coils. “I wouldn’t sssstay, if I were you. Might be sssssome time.”

“I’ll give you your space,” Aziraphale agreed, taking the hint, “do you mind if I stay here, though? In the living room?”

“Ssssfine.” Crowley wriggled again, eyeing the rock with a speculative air, and Aziraphale left him to it.

He’d spent longer reading and running the bath than he thought; it hadn’t even been dark outside yet when they arrived at the flat, but now morning’s first light was beginning to peek around the edges of the blackout blinds in the living room. Aziraphale settled on the sofa he suspected Crowley only _ had _for his visits, and picked up the snake book again.

A soft, strangled moan reached his ears; Aziraphale frowned vaguely at the walls for a moment before he realised that it had come from the bathroom. _ Crowley_. The sound came again, followed by a satisfied hiss.

“Oh, that’ssss the ssspot.”

Aziraphale blushed, feeling suddenly as if he was listening to something intensely private; he snapped his fingers at Crowley’s music player and was relieved to find that bebop, for all its questionable artistic merit, was quite capable of drowning out the sound of a snake writhing his way out of his skin.

It wasn’t until some time later that Aziraphale realised he couldn’t hear anything in the silence between tracks. He threw the book aside and ran into the bathroom without a thought - no thought but Crowley. What if he’d slipped beneath the water and drowned? What would even _ happen _to Crowley if he discorporated himself in snake form?

“Crowley? Are you-?” But the snake was still lying in the bath, head draped over the edge, fast asleep. Aziraphale could hear the steady hiss of his breath. Beside him lay a perfect ghostly image of himself, freshly shed. Aziraphale fished it out of the water, mostly to keep his hands busy, and checked it quickly for holes.

“Nah, ‘sssss perfect,” Crowley told him lazily, apparently awake after all. “I’m all itchy now. New skin. ‘Sss weird.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Get me out?” Crowley grimaced, as much as a snake _ could _ grimace. “I tried, but ‘ssss too ssslippy. You can touch now, anyway.”

Aziraphale set aside the shed skin - an oddly unsettling object - and drained the water from the bath before gathering the many coils of wet snake into his arms. As an afterthought, he miracled up a towel and draped it over his shoulder before carrying Crowley back through to the bedroom, where the heat lamps were.

“Not how I imagined carrying you to bed,” he admitted, and Crowley flicked his tongue out.

“Sssssaucy angel.”

“Shhh. Let me get you dry.” He dumped Crowley onto the pile of duvets, then held the towel open so that he could slip into it. It was a strange sensation, gently towelling Crowley’s serpent form; he’d so rarely been allowed to see him in it. Crowley had barely worn it since the Beginning, as far as he knew. Now Aziraphale took the opportunity to familiarise himself with the flexible spine, the gleaming scales- and it wasn’t until he moved the towel down a little further that Crowley began to laugh. It was a strange, stuttering hiss, but Aziraphale recognised it for what it was.

“Are you _ ticklish_, Crowley?”

“No-” He was still laughing, though, and Aziraphale suspected he wasn't being entirely honest. “I just- I’m just- laughing at- I just thought. If someone called you now-”

“On your phone? Unlikely.”

“If they did- they’d ask what you’re doing, and you’d have to sssay- you’re on my bed, rubbing your snake.”

With that, Crowley rolled off him, slipping free of the towel as he did, and slithered behind the bed. When he sat up, he was _ Crowley _ again, his usual irrepressible human self, grinning, and Aziraphale barely had time to blush before he miracled some clothes onto his sudden abundance of limbs.

“It’s an innuendo, angel-”

“I know what it is. You ought to be more careful making that sort of joke with people who are, as you point out, on your bed. They might get the wrong idea.”

“Who’s to say it’s the wrong idea?” The demon wouldn’t quite meet Aziraphale’s eye, as if he was waiting for a rejection, but he wouldn’t get one here.

“Who indeed. Are you sure you’re up to it, so soon after shedding?”

“Yeah, I’m fine-” Crowley gave a full-body shudder as he spoke, and huffed. “Well, I’m still a _ bit _tender.”

“Rain check, then. When we do this, I don’t want you to fall apart.” Aziraphale lay back on the bed, ignoring the odd nest of duvets, and waited for Crowley to join him. Then, because Crowley was right about him being just enough of a bastard, he leant in close to Crowley’s ear, careful not to touch. “I want to _ take _you apart.”

Crowley yelped and threw himself back into the duvet nest, and Aziraphale was rather proud of himself. All in all, Crowley’s shedding hadn’t been nearly as traumatic as it could have been.


End file.
